


The many trips of love I'll take you on

by Nhuy



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: F/F, Mari being a Good Friend (tm), no beta we die like women, pure fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29402097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nhuy/pseuds/Nhuy
Summary: Alternative Title #1: Asuka being sarcastically in denial of her feelings for like one chapter and spending the rest of the fic as a disastrous lesbean.Or:Alternative Title #2: Rei being precious and catching the gay for Asuka for years until the red gremlin manages to clean the cobwebs from her brain.(Update VERY Irregularly.)
Relationships: Ayanami Rei/Souryuu Asuka Langley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	The many trips of love I'll take you on

**Author's Note:**

> The Art of Love is: not taking shits from your best friend even though sometimes her takes are real good.

This summer, an early May affair that heralded end-of-term tests and undiluted coffee, started in the same way it had always been, many times throughout the years. The trees lining outside her house, old and sturdy despite the swarm of children climbing up and swinging from its branches, rustled with every humid breeze, barely visible gaps in the green leaves allowing the scorching sun to slip through, dotting the playground in random, ever-changing patterns. The clouds were merciless today, migrating to somewhere far from her eyesight, past the steel jungle of her born-and-bred city and down the horizon, leaving behind only a vast expanse of space that did nothing but to amplify the sun’s horrible blessing.

Souryuu Asuka Langley thought her all-terrain bike—and its newly installed seat, shiny and much more supporting of her butt—must be a mobile heat-conducting vehicle, right in this instance. But alas, in this sweltering weather, the thought had been no more than a fleeting flash of annoyance in her mind, as occupied as she, unusually enough, was with a much more important subject. Even the brief, eyesight-challenging glares of the sun weren’t enough to bump her mind of the matter.

Simply put, as her pain-in-the-ass friend Mari had done throughout the days after needling Asuka herself to spill the beans, the suffering dilemma plaguing this high school hotshot senior was nothing else but the age-old topic of thousands of songs and movies and poems: Love.

She had laughed and laughed when Mari had approached her desk last Tuesday with a stupid, nigh-unthinkable question of _Do you have a crush on Ayanami Rei?_ being the first thing leaving her mouth. It had stirred up such an absurd jolt across her mind that Asuka found her hands floundered in the middle of forking a mouthful of spaghetti, tomato sauce spilled out from the edge of her boxed lunch. Her ugly laugh stopped and another, higher-pitched yelp echoed inside the half-empty classroom along with the bang her fingers made against the wooden tabletop, drawing the attention of her, more often than not, viscerally intrusive peers. Worse, the asshole had kept smirking at Asuka’s misfortune, that blasted smug grin curling her lips up enough to make Asuka want to punch her in the face.

And then, only after she had gotten the mess under control had Asuka, star athlete and currently a walking timebomb, deigned to acknowledge the grinning Cheshire cat perching to her right. “What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck?”

“Hi! So.” Mari had kept the grin steady on her face. Never before had Asuka wanted to jerk her up and down to see whatever the fucking kind of brainworm working its dark magic inside her mind had been. “You. Ayanami. Got a crush on her or something?”

Her first instinct had been to yell—and yelled she had, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!”

“ _Oh, slow down Princess. I’m just asking a bit_.” Mari’s posh English slithered into Asuka’s burning ears, the abrupt language change done nothing to deter the righteous wrath coiling in her stomach. _“You have been stealing glances at her throughout morning classes, you know?”_

_“No! No I didn’t!_ ” Her voice, now switched to English, had been no more than a shrilled sound—reminiscence of something like a chicken having its neck grabbed. The fork with its rolled-up spaghetti clacked noisily against the plastic container of her lunch.

_“Aw, someone is in denial!”_ Mari’s glasses had glinted like an anime detective. _“You aren’t fooling anyone with that act, darling.”_

_“Shove off, you damn asshole!”_

_“Come on, you don’t fancy me reliable enough to spill the tea?”_

_“It’s precisely the fact that you behave like this,”_ Asuka had stood up and bellowed, her syllable made harsher by an underlying German accent. “ _That I don’t ‘fancy you reliable’ enough to say anything!”_

_“So there_ is _something to tell.”_ A wide, mischievous smile. _“Curious and curiouser.”_

_“Curiosity kills the cat, don’t ya know?!”_

_“You jest! All I am doing is offering you a duly warranted amount of concern befitting my status as your best friend, Princess.”_

Asuka had felt the eyes of her classmates digging into her shoulders like knives, unpleasant and irritating. As much of an attention whore Asuka herself had known to be acting, to have this many pairs of eyes turned to stare unblinkingly at them over this _situation_ had never ranked high on Asuka’s favorite list.

(To be perfectly fair, rarely anything had ever ranked high on that list either. Except for few selected things throughout eighteen years of her life that could be counted on one hand, nothing had ever impressed her _that_ much anyway.

Though, there had been that time in the library, of a setting sun framing stark white hair and dyeing deep brown eyes into a bloodied red, of pale hands reaching futilely for a hard-bounded encyclopedia so high above the shelves and dainty feet standing on tiptoes to reach it. She had absolutely refused to _even_ spare that memory—with its phantom sensation of a more diminutive form pressing against her front, the soft syllables rolling of pouty lips and the blinking of doe eyes up her sight—the time of her day.)

Blinking rapidly to clear the images away, Asuka had decided to end the conversation before Mari sniffed out her track, “Right, so if you are my so-called _best friend_ , let me have my lunch in peace!”

That said, her mind had studiously ignored the pain-in-the-ass’ continued ribbing and picked up the fork to shove the content inside her mouth, deliberately chewing with a lot of noise to cover the asshole’s yapping up. It had worked—for the rest of the school day anyway.

There had been no escape from the jerk in her own house.

Long story short, Asuka had _spilled the tea_ under threats of having her new game discs hidden away somewhere only Mari knew—and she had taken that threat seriously because, god-fucking-damn it all, Asuka had wanted to platinum one of the games in the stack and she’d not let any little meddling shit stopping her from doing so. The shiny, fully-packaged disc had been returned to her, a bit scuffed in their mighty struggle, but nothing had relieved her more than hearing the familiar music of the main menu bouncing out of the speakers. She had been content to let Mari draw whatever kind of conclusion from the things Asuka had told her, a fruitless hope at finally letting the matter lay; but, tragically enough, the matter _hadn’t_ been laid to sleep. None. Nope. _Nein_.

_“Aw,_ _look at Ayanami go! A book in one hand, a cup of tea in another—she’ll make many nerdy boys tumbling over their own feet just to ask her out!”_ She had jabbed her elbow into Asuka’s side during volleyball practice. Asuka had shrugged her off and ran to pick a ball, shouting for the members to go over their new strategy in the next match.

_“Hey, Asuka!”_ Again, only a day later, the annoyance had unceremoniously snapped two fingers in front of Asuka’s eyes before seizing her face to point to the corner of the classroom. _“Ayanami looks cute in her glasses, right? It gives her that nerdy, classical look that you so like, doesn’t it?”_

Asuka had also employed the ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ strategy again, trying her best to control the popping vein in her forehead. She had hoped whatever kind of ruckus Mari had been doing wouldn’t draw Ayanami Rei’s attention. Luckily enough it hadn’t, which nearly had Asuka sending a private word of gratitude up to whatever deity that had been keeping watch over her, but she had been resolute to stopping her self-proclaimed best friend from doing it again.

The third time had _definitely not_ been the charm, as it literally had come out of nowhere—Mari had swung her arm over Asuka’s neck and, with the loudest, most conspiratorial voice available in her arsenal, pretended to fake a gasp, “Hey Ayanami! New haircut?”

The entire hall had seemed to quiet down, the eyes of the dozens of milling students abruptly turning their undivided focus onto the trio. Asuka had wanted to straggle the little shit—and then straggle herself too, for good measure. It had been the kind of absurd silence that even allow for a pin to audibly drop, so out of the left field the entire sixty-or-so occupants of the corridor had been flummoxed with the interaction.

Ayanami Rei, the pretty anti-social nerd that she had been, had slowly shaken her head. In the span of the precious few seconds of the action, Asuka had started to debating the pros and cons of digging a hole underground to bury both Mari and herself right at that moment—but tragically, like a Shakespearean comedy, Mari had bulldozed forward with her usual jaunty grin.

“Oh? Well, Asuka here thinks you look _absolutely_ refreshing today. Right, _Ah-su-ka_?”

And, like a goddamn fool, Asuka had shot herself in the foot. “Fuck no!”

Ayanami Rei, once again demonstrating that she had the emotional receptors of a doll, had only nodded and turned a sharp 180 to soldier down the row of classrooms, leaving behind a blinking Mari and a mortified Asuka—with the addition of sixty-something extras like in a movie studio. The quiet left behind her departure had not been out of place in the Arctics.

Asuka hadn’t even spoken to Mari for the last three days ever since that incident. She normally wouldn’t have anyway—as it was test week and Asuka knew her mind could cram all of the shits she needed to learn in only a few days—but with the hanging weight of _that_ horrifically embarrassing encounter with Rei still on her mind, Asuka decided she wouldn’t be talking with the perpetrator of the act until Mari apologized.

Thus, it led to her sitting by the window and wondering whether her buttocks would become deep-fried buttocks if she rode her bike down the streets, right under this sweltering heat. Half-opened notebooks strewed across the white-red sheets of her bed, pens rolled on the floor without their caps, her red-cased phone was buzzing with ignored texts from Mari—and Asuka was so terribly bored out of her mind. Her fingers itched to hold a volleyball or a controller—either would suffice, if she was being honest with herself—but Asuka had made a plan that involved passing all of her exams with flying colors; that plan couldn’t be executed if she picked up her hobbies again at the first sight of boredom.

Her fingers ripped a blank page out of a notebook and sluggishly folded the slip into a crude paper plane, throwing it around the room for kicks. The tip of the primitive toy crumbled upon slamming into the dresser slotted neatly in the corner of the room before dropping pitifully down onto a bunched-up jacket—Asuka almost didn’t want to get up to retrieve the thing. She did anyway, smoothing down the edge while sweating enough to slick her bangs into her face. Blasted AC and its horrid timing, broken down right on today of all day—and goddamn _wonderful_ , the plane had been carried off Asuka’s intended flight path by a gush of wind to plummet outside of the window.

She was undeniably not going to retrieve it this time.

Two minutes later found Asuka hands-deep inside the scrubs below her window, muttering curses in English and German about the oven-like temperature and its ill-timed breezes that _sucked_ her toys out under the sun. A bit too late to wish for a jacket—if nothing else, it could shield her from the unforgiving solar beam—but Asuka was determined to find the little plane and finally holing up inside her room, out of the damn heat, to _fucking_ study for the test!

Naturally enough, that was when she met Ayanami Rei again.

Cladded in a light yellow polo top and knee-length shorts, bob-cut hair framing her pretty face and a pair of glass covering her rust-color eyes, Ayanami was a sight for sore eyes. Asuka felt herself getting light-headed at the sight—and at the thought of Ayanami seeing her well-worn t-shirt and short shorts while elbow-deep in sidewalk bushes like a goddamn thief. She doubted Ayanami even know this place was Asuka’s house itself.

“…it’s not what it looks like.” It was Asuka’s lame response to her spectator’s silent inquiry.

“…okay.” Ayanami, star student and record-holder of the quickest, most brutal murder in the school chess club, nodded. Asuka could feel herself reaching critical embarrassment level.

Then her silent juror bent to give Asuka a proper Japanese bow before stalking away at a brisk pace, her footsteps echoed against the asphalt behind the mortified (again) senior. She had planned to return the bow with a nod, but Rei had been swift in departing—in which Asuka wouldn’t delve too hard on, seeing as Mari had made an absolute spectacle of them both a few days prior—so her eyes barely caught the back of Rei’s glowing hair and…

The scrunched-up plane in her hand.

Asuka abruptly stood up, fighting past the fuzzy headache borne from the action and the heat, and stretched her hand to Ayanami’s direction, words building up in her throat. “Wait—”

Too late. Ayanami, with her slender hand and dainty wrist, threw the plane into a nearby trash bin.

“—don’t throw it…” She trailed off, her ears suddenly sensitive enough to hear the _thunk_ of the paper hitting the bottom of the steel bin.

Perhaps hearing the desolation in Asuka’s voice, Ayanami titled her head to lock eyes with her own, the color resembling rubies under the harsh sunlight. Her full lips parted, a peak of a tongue darted over them, before the tiniest, softest whisper floated between them both.

“Oh.”

“Right.” Asuka was stupefied. Because Ayanami just threw her toy away—and certainly not because of how soft her lips looked in that moment. Or how Ayanami’s pale skin glistered under the sun. Or the way the pair of glasses gave Ayanami’s pretty face a _certain_ touch that burnt Asuka from under her collar to the tip of her nose.

( _It was just the sunlight_ , her heat-fried brain vehemently denied.)

“I’ll fold you a new one,” the willowy girl, thin yet womanly, walked back to Asuka’s crouched position, her stance not out of place on a catwalk. That smooth, feather-like voice was like honey to Asuka’s burning ears, doing absolutely nothing to slow the speed of her thundering heart.

“Uh, no—no need for that,” Asuka hated her vocal cord for stuttering, making a fool of herself again in front of this too-pretty-too-frail girl. “I can just fold a new one. Like, right now.”

“But…”

With a wave of her hand, the sweating girl whose heart was doing its best imitation of a marathon runner assuaged away the contrite apology she could see building up in Ayanami’s lungs. God, walking in this heat without anything to cover her head, her body as thin as a little bird—how in the world didn’t Ayanami keel over yet? “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been studying anyway, a bunch of spare papers up in my room.”

Her thumb pointed to the opened window hovering a floor up above their head, the fluttering sway of maroon curtains casting shadows over the bushes and Asuka herself. The current object of her attention darted rust-colored eyes up quickly, only enough time to register the metallic frame of the windowsill, before she bowed again, this time in a perfect 90 degree, parallel with the heated cement, the slender set of her shoulder blades stark against the beating light.

“Still, I am sorry for throwing your plane away. I hope you can forgive me.”

“It’s just a little slip of blank paper, Ayanami. No need to get all repenting with me like that.” Asuka didn’t like it when people bowed to her and, certainly enough consider _who_ was bowing in front of her eyes, she definitely didn’t want Rei to bow like this. “It’s fine, really.”

Full lips pursed, the tiniest frown graced itself across the girl’s elegant face. Asuka wanted to reach to smooth it all away—and Ayanami straightened up, gentle voice whispered out, “Then, I thank you for forgiving me. Goodbye, Souryuu-san.”

“Wait!” This time, Asuka found her voice much quicker than before—and her hand outstretched to grasp onto the back of the yellow polo. “Where are you going under this weather?”  
  


She wondered whether her question had been _too_ intrusive, to the point of making Ayanami blink and stare at her for thirty seconds straight—before the girl answered, swaying with that unique swan-like grace to face Asuka again. “I am returning to my house from the local library.”

“Oh.” A map of her neighborhood unfurled inside Asuka’s mind. “Isn’t the shortest route like, two blocks away from this one?”

“Yes.” Ayanami allowed a rare trace of annoyance to color her voice, serving nothing but making it more adorable in Asuka’s very _objective_ opinion. “However, there is some kind of repairing going on currently on the road. The shopkeeper near my house advised me to go this route.”

“Ah.”

“Thank you for asking, and I am again sorry for throwing away your thing.” Gently, with nary more effort needed than breathing, Ayanami Rei slipped from her fingers and turned on her heels, for all intent and purpose projecting her intention to power-walk home. “It was very nice to meet you, Souryuu-san.”

The sun was beating down on her head, the breeze didn’t carry with it any speck of coolness, the heat seeping from the cement was burning her feet through the slippers—and Asuka tugged at Ayanami again, “Hey, shit, wait for a bit, wouldn’t you?! Walking bare-headed like this, let me take you home!”

Met with only a stupefied blink in response, Asuka felt she had really done it now—but she wouldn’t back out, not when she could spend a little more time in Ayanami’s gentle presence and stare at Ayanami’s gentle face. “Just standing here a bit please. I’ll get my bike.”

“Ah, I can’t possibly trouble you like this—” The quiet girl was wringing her fingers together in some kind of nervous tick, her voice cracking at the edge—and the red on her cheeks was probably from overexposure under the sun. Unbidden, the running-on-bravery-girl grasped the little digits in her larger hands and unclenched them, smoothing out the elegant set of fingers.

She privately put the thought of those sweet hands and how they fitted so well under her own to a corner of her mind, waiting until later—or until her bravado ran out—to digest them.

“Nah, you aren’t troubling me one bit. Besides, I’m bored anyway,” Asuka grinned, letting Ayanami go and ready her legs to sprint inside the house to retrieve a few things. “Taking you home is probably gonna help me swallow all of that boring formulas better.”

“…then,” a breath, before the most beautiful, brilliant little smile curled up on Ayanami Rei’s lips. Asuka thought maybe there was something in Mari’s accusation; because how else could she explain away the heat that deep-dyed her own cheeks and the way her heart virtually stopped? “I’ll be imposing on your kindness, Souryuu-san.”

“Uh, yeah!”

The distance from her house to Ayanami Rei’s wasn’t very far, only a ten-minute affair on bike. To the one slowly peddling a really pretty girl home, it felt _much_ longer.

At the start, Ayanami had been stiff as a wooden block, sitting primly like on a taxi despite straddling the backseat of the red bike, both hands clenched in her laps; she had been a constant thought niggling at the back of Asuka’s mind, wondering what Ayanami’s innocent face had looked like, how her hair had framed those precious cheekbones under the hat Asuka had lent her and whether the girl would have fallen off without a proper handhold. It had been so tempting, just only a motion of her left arm would be enough to nudge Ayanami Rei to cling onto her waist—but Asuka had more self-discipline than that, plus the fact that she had been confident about her biking skills.

That didn’t mean the silence between them both didn’t hang like a weight above their heads.

“Hey, Ayanami.”

“Yes, Souryuu-san?”

“So, uh,” Asuka sweated profusely, borne from the stark heat and the impulsive fumbling for a conversation topic. “About the other day…”

“…Souryuu-san?”

“I, uh, didn’t mean to,” her body tilted a bit to the right, swerving the bike past an empty soda can. A flitter of shadow darted across the steel handlebar, a bird or something. “Curse at you. So…”

“…ah.” The soft sotto voice of the girl sitting behind her was almost swallowed up by the breezing wind. “It is fine, Souryuu-san. I understand that Illustrious-san was putting you in an unfavorable situation.”

“Yeah, the jerk did.” Asuka nodded, the relief of knowing Ayanami Rei didn’t misunderstand her was an adrenaline shot straight down her vein. Courage spurred up, unbidden but not necessarily unwelcomed. “But I… do think you look nice, Ayanami. Er, normally, I mean.”

In response to Asuka’s out-of-nowhere statement, Ayanami kept silent; it was worrying enough to know her mouth ran off without any forethought whatsoever, the absolute stillness incarnated sitting behind her right now was ten-time worse.

“I…”

The poor organ thumping in her chest cavity rushed faster—both from the exercise and the anticipation of whatever coming out of Ayanami’s mouth.

“Thank you.”

“No—no problem!”

“So, this is where you live huh?” It wasn’t what Asuka had expected. The apartment building wasn’t anything luxurious like those upper-class ones—but she was sure as heck this one wasn’t the kind of neighborhood Ayanami was supposed to live in. The star student herself, prim and proper and straightlaced Ayanami Rei, living in an area famous for crimes? Hell yes she didn’t have that on her agenda to find out for today.

“Yes. It looks better on the inside.”

“Even a cardboard box will look better on the inside if you know how to decorate it,” Asuka deadpanned.

“Um.”

She wouldn’t apologize for the remark. “You walk home everyday like this?”

Her conversation partner nodded, a little demure gesture that did nothing to hide how small her frame stood, framed against the graffitied building. This specific part of their city was riddled with robberies, muggings and the like—a little waft like Rei would be no more than easy prey to be picked.

“Ugh. Impossible, you are impossible.”

“I’m sorry.”

“ _Ugh_. Why did you apologize?” Asuka didn’t dare to look straight into the other girl’s guileless eyes—the glimpse of a pout unfurling on those soft, pink lips was enough to boil her blood. “Not your fault.”

Ayanami continued in that contrite, sweet tone. “You are angry.”

“Not at you.” 

“But at my place of residence.”

“Your place, I know jack shit about. But this neighborhood?” Asuka ground her voice when mentioning the area. “Hell yeah I’m pissed.”

“It’s…” Ayanami took a second to blink, as if rearranging the words into something that wouldn’t drive Asuka into a further rage. “I can take care of myself. Your concern is… much appreciated.”

Well, the German had to be honest with herself, Ayanami _did_ have the subtlety and finesse of a brick, if this was how she chose to assuage Asuka’s mind. “ _Riiiiight_. How about this?”

Before she could actually process anything, Asuka stepped forward, hands tipping the cap situated on top of white hair down to hide herself from Ayanami Rei’s line of sight. Her voice cracked, broken under her quickened heartbeat—but she decided she’d do this; if not for Ayanami’s sake, then surely it was for her peace of mind. “I’ll take you to school and to home, starting from tomorrow.”

Predictably enough, Ayanami gasped. The heat rising onto her cheeks was because of the sun, Asuka told herself. Definitely the sun. It was not, she reinstated, because of her close proximity with Ayanami Rei and how the girl looked so tiny she made Asuka want to drag her onto Asuka’s lap and hugged her like the softest teddy bear in the whole wide world— _wait_.

Oh—kay, so there _was_ actually some truth to Mari’s needling. It was fine. Totally.

“You—you don’t have to! I can handle myself and, Souryuu-san,” Ayanami wiggled from under her palm, like a little kitten fumbling around for a ball of yarn. “That would trouble you too much.”

“I wouldn’t be offering it if it actually inconvenienced me, ya know?”

“Still, this is the opposite direction of your house…”

“I need to exercise in the morning anyway.”

“…you’ll have to get up early.”

“I get up even earlier if the volleyball team has a match that day. Gotta get in my proper miles just in case.”

Ayanami still tried. “…the road is unsafe.”

“That’s why I’m offering in the first place.”

“But—”

“Look, if you don’t want it, I won’t force you to,” Asuka interrupted, locking her eyes with the reddish hues of the girl standing opposite of her. “But I worry about you walking alone in this part of the city. If I ferry you back and forth, it’ll be safer and faster for you.”

“What about your sports practice?”

“That?” She let out a laugh, kicking the kickstand with a swipe of her heel. “Me and the girls always finish on time, unless there’s a meet or a coming match. But I bet, even if I’m out late, I can still bring you home faster than you walking on foot.”

Deep brown eyes fluttered up at Asuka, the slope of Ayanami’s adorable nose scrunching in intense thought. She knew this kind of offer was abnormal, especially when rarely anyone in school dared to approach the star student for mindless conversation—and certainly more extraordinary coming from _Souryuu Asuka Langley_ , resident HBIC of the entire thousand-something student body. But it couldn’t be helped, not when Ayanami Rei was wide-eyed and flushed cheeks and too waif to actually knock a fucking thief’s teeth off—so Asuka only offered out of the kindness of her heart, no ulterior motive whatsoever.

Right. Who the fuck was she trying to fool anyway…?

“Souryuu-san...” the sotto, silk-like voice of her (potential) romantic interest jerked Asuka out of her inner musings. Her eyes darted down the street, up to shaded benches across the vandalized building—and down to make contact with Rei. “Are you sure? I don’t want to bother you.”

Asuka shrugged, slicking her bangs back and fanning herself with a hand. “Positive. Like I said, I wouldn’t have put this on the table if I thought it could actually bother me. And no need to pay back either. Think of it as you helping me with morning exercises.”

“I…” Ayanami Rei visibly hesitated, neatly trimmed nails worrying the threads of her shirt. “Will your friends…?”

“Mari?” Asuka laughed with her teeth bared, evil and horrid. “I’ll knock her on the head if she squeaks.”

A beat. “Ah…”

“Hmm.”

“…if it isn’t too much trouble, Souryuu-san,” the girl pursed her lips and bowed, again making a sharp parallel with the pavement. “I’ll be in your care.”

Warmth bloomed in Asuka’s chest—made even more evident by the rapid thumping of her heart working overtime. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling widely. “Don’t you worry. I’ll chaperone ya safe and sound!”

“Thank you very much.” A brilliant smile, for there was no other way to acutely describe the curl of Ayanami’s precious lips, lit up the girl’s entire face with its gentle glow, the red cap borrowed from Asuka looking so out of place up against such fragile visage. “I’ll be sure to get you something in return.”

“Nah. As long as you keep steady on my bike, I don’t need you doing anything else.”

**Author's Note:**

> To old readers, if you are asking yourself this question: "Nhuy, is this.. is this.. fluff? pure no-nonsense fluff you are writing?", then don't worry, my friends had the same reaction :D
> 
> To new readers, hi and welcome to another one of my hellhole that's gonna hang around somewhere in the abyss of months-long wait-for-update. Don't worry, be happy my friends!


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